Contents

Because Los Santos began as an under-the-radar smuggling group, which tried to avoid police detection due to its small size. However, they quickly swelled to power in the early 1960's, mainly unopposed by the ragtag gangs that Colombia had to offer at the time. They gained a foothold over weak authority such as local police officers through means of bribery or assassinations. However, because of weak logistics and the failure of Cormac Valdez to effectively organize a means to hold territory, the group was confined to operations in Barranquilla.

In 1970, college dropout Frederico Nuñez became a member of Los Santos and grew close with Valdez, much to the resent of senior officers of Los Santos. In a vicious but bloodless coup, they kicked Valdez and Nuñez out of the gang, leading to the formation of Los Santos' rival Los Hombres de la Gabardina. As Los Hombres grew to mild prominence, senior officers of Los Santos pulled a vicious hit on December 28, 1975 in a day that was known as La Noche de la Lluvia Negra or "The Night of the Black Rain". Valdez was killed but Nuñez managed to escape - a mistake that would plague the men of Los Santos for the rest of their operational days. Although Nuñez did pull off an act of revenge in kidnapping several Los Santos leaders and leaving them to die in a locked warehouse, it did little to shake Los Santos internally, and only served to feed the blood feud between the gangs.

However, Los Hombres de la Gabardina quickly straightened itself out and imposed harsh disciplinary measures on its members, solidifying itself as a true gang. It boomed in territorial expansion while Los Santos declined into little more than the street gang it had been under Valdez. Eventually the gang became too poor to fund itself and merged into Los Hombres de la Gabardina, proving once and for all that their ultimate rivals were the supreme rulers of Colombia's underworld. Their mistake in allowing Nuñez to escape La Noche de la Lluvia Negra was their ultimate undoing.